San Francisco Frontiers - UBC professor describes police call after Galloway remark as act of care

VANCOUVER — A University of British Columbia professor has testified about a colleague’s decision to call police to visit Steven Galloway after he was accused of sexual assault, describing it as an “act of care” toward the author, who had spoken of killing himself. Galloway, who is suing his accuser and others in a defamation trial centred on the unproven allegations, has described his subsequent committal to a hospital in the United States as “terrifying.”

But creative writing professor Annabel Lyon testified on Tuesday in the defamation lawsuit that calling 911 about Galloway had been unfairly “twisted as some sadistic act.” Galloway, the award-winning author of “The Cellist of Sarajevo,” was never charged over the allegations, and his accuser, a former student known as A.B. with whom Galloway had an affair, is not defending the alleged defamatory statements as true.

Her defence does not allege she was sexually assaulted, but only that she reported the assaults. Lyon, who is now the director of the university’s school of creative writing, is the first witness for A.B., who cannot be named under a publication ban.

The professor told the B.C. Supreme Court that A.B. had given a statement to police but retracted it a short time later out of concern they would contact Galloway. Lyon later described how she first learned of the allegations against Galloway from a fellow professor in November 2015.

She then spoke on the phone with A.B. before Lyon and others met to discuss what to do on Nov. 15 and 16, 2015. Lyon described meeting with two colleagues when Galloway began calling them all from Ohio. They did not immediately answer.

Lyon said she eventually spoke to Galloway and it sounded like he was crying. He said “I should just kill myself,” she testified. One of Lyon’s colleagues called 911 and the court heard police indicated up at the author’s hotel room after getting a report he was suicidal.

Lyon said Ohio police had called her, saying Galloway didn’t seem suicidal, but she told them that he was “manipulative” and she later learned he’d been taken to hospital. “Those events have been massively twisted and misunderstood, and it hurts me to my core,” Lyon said.

“It was an act of care. We made that call as an act in care. And when I heard that the police were there, and when I hear that he was in a hospital, I was relieved because I thought, ‘He is safe. At least for tonight, he’s safe.'” Galloway testified last month that being put into hospital as a result of the call “was the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in my life.”

Under cross-examination on Tuesday from Galloway’s lawyer Daniel Burnett, Lyon said she didn’t follow up afterwards because she’d been told not to communicate with Galloway. “The only reason I broke that rule in allowing him to phone me that night and picking up the phone was because of what my administrator had said, that if he was any danger to himself and we had not answered that we would not be able to live with ourselves,” she said.

“I felt that I had done what I could do from the distance that I was at.” Lyon had told the court earlier on Tuesday that she thought of Galloway as an “annoying little brother,” and that their families had been friends before the events that saw him suspended and later fired by the university.

Galloway alleges he was defamed by A.B. and others for publishing the unproven allegations, which he denies and which were found unsubstantiated by a former judge hired by the university. Lyon said those who met about the allegations were “absolutely shocked” by them.

She recalled a discussion that while A.B. had reported the allegations to police, she later retracted the statement out of concern the RCMP were going to reach out to Galloway and she felt unsafe. Galloway was fired from his job as the creative writing chair, but won an arbitration proceeding against the university in 2018.

Lyon said she felt “very strongly” that Galloway should be suspended pending an investigation of the allegations. She said she had told A.B. she believed the allegations, and relayed them to her colleagues at the woman’s request, but believed she could be a “neutral” liaison between her and another former student tasked with gathering more complaints against Galloway.

She said the suspension of Galloway would make it safe for others to come forward if they wanted to. “The university had put me in that role,” she said. “I tried very hard to be neutral in all of this.”

The trial continues on Wednesday.

D.Robinson--SFF